With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh favouring full float of the rupee, Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would, in the next few days, announce steps on capital account convertibility of the Indian currency."Prime Minister has made a very definitive statement day before yesterday, and the RBI and the government would announce the next steps (on capital account convertibility) in a few days from now," he said at a CII function this morning.The full float of the rupee would facilitate conversion of the Indian currency into foreign currency and vice versa - a move that would help attract greater investments. At present, the rupee is convertible on current account, basically for trade purposes.Chidambaram said the finance ministry and RBI had discussions on capital account convertibility of the rupee, and the issue could have been part of Budget 2006. "It was pulled out of the Budget as it could have overshadowed other fiscal policy announcements," he said.The Prime Minister said, on Saturday in Mumbai, that he had requested the finance ministry and the RBI to revisit the issue of full convertibility of the rupee, and come out with a roadmap on it based on current realities.Chidambaram said that he would address the problem of liquidity at hismeeting with bankers on Thursday while pointing out that pressure on availability of money with banks has eased lately."For the first time after three months, RBI took money through reverse repo rather than giving money through repo (operations)," he said adding the liquidity situation has changed for the better.
